Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy attacked “woefully low” standards in Britain’s education system, blaming the government for a surplus of quangos and guideline overkill.

Joining other business figures who have publicly voiced discontent with Labour in recent weeks, Leahy said that Tesco, as Britain’s ­ largest private employer, depended on high standards of education but was not getting them. Katie Allen, The Guardian.

I’m fed up with the constant unfounded attacks on education, there’s no getting away from the fact that or schools have never been better – one statistic: the number of secondaries where fewer than 30% of pupils gain five good GCSE’s including English and Maths has fallen from 1600 in 1997 to just 270 this year – Source: DCSF.

Yes we need to do better there’s 270 secondaries for a start – education isn’t a place for complacency – what we don’t need is unfounded attacks like these.

As for Tesco depend on high standards of education – what a joke – you don’t need a university degree to operate a cash register or the thousands of other menial and boring jobs his company provides

You know there’s a whole thesis to be written on how Tesco’s has failed us – here’s just one story that springs to mind on how supermarkets have and are continuing to destroy the lives of workers on banana plantations – all done with our own money.

Bananas down to 38p per kilo in Asda, 35p per kilo in Tesco this week. A supermarket price war over a fruit with as much comic potential as the banana ought to be funny. Asda has said that it will take the cost of slashing the retail price from its own margins and not pass the pain on down the supply chain, so surely consumers can only benefit as the big four rivals slug it out for market share. Except, of course, we know that’s not how the script usually runs when UK supermarkets start price wars.

If anyone thinks supermarkets are in the business of simply handing cash back to customers, they are being naive. I’ve been analysing data on price rises in Asda on some of the biggest-selling brands between 8 July this year and last week – when the banana wars got heavy. There’s been a 72% increase in PG Tips tea, a 45% rise on some Colgate top-selling toothpastes, a more than 100% increase on some Pringles crisps, 38% on Rich Tea biscuits, and 85% on single cream. These are steep rises, not on goods that were previously on promotion, but on the usual price.

That looks to me remarkably like a supermarket increasing its margin to build a war chest of cash. Can I be sure? No. Like most shoppers, I find it impossible to keep track of supermarket pricing because it is so variable and opaque. Even the competition authorities have admitted they do not have the resources to monitor what the big picture is. But it’s a fair bet that what supermarkets give back to us with one hand, they are taking, or have already taken, with the other. In the short term, cutting the price of bananas and selling them below the cost of production is a game for them, a paper exercise in shifting profits around, designed to grab publicity, pull shoppers in to spend on other highly profitable goods, and squeeze their competitors.

But in the medium and long term, it’s no game for the rest of the banana industry. A phony supermarket price war is a real war for them – one in which they tend to suffer the collateral damage. We know from the bitter history of such price wars that the costs have been passed down the chain, if not immediately, then over the subsequent months. Felicity Lawrence, The Guardian.

Never forget they’ll do anything for a profit – what Leahy really means is pupils aren’t trained to maximise the amount of cash he trousers and he trousers plenty.